New Ones

 We have been needing new pictures for our fireplace mantle for a while.  The ones we have up are over a year old.  I haven't been in much of a hurry, since those were the pictures we had up before Andrew died.   I am reminded that I'm not going to have a new picture of Andrew.

 The first four of each of the kids are the best for each.  

The rest of the pictures are ones that we really like.  I really love this one of Jared, but the tree blurred out in the back of his head was too distracting. 

 Tanner is such a funny boy.

  

 Tann has the most infectious laugh.

 Aubs couldn't wait till I could take a picture of her jumping.

 My hott husband!  I'm so grateful for him!  Today, we celebrate 9 years since we met at a tiny single's ward dance in Moses Lake.
Eric not only passed his National Boards, but he did really well on them.  We are so grateful for Eric's hard work.  It has been so fun to have him around more.  I 

Jared was starting to cry, so Eric started doing something crazy behind me.  The boys thought it was pretty funny (Toot noises may have been involved...).

Pictures Update

Dirty Jared

Aubree dressed herself for her first day of school.

Trav calls these his Tiger Jammies.

We celebrated Sara's birthday a few weeks ago.

We had the chance to go to Wenatchee a few week ago while Eric was studying for boards.  We try and stop at Andrew's grave.  The kids are so cute about cleaning it off and putting flowers on it.  We love going to Andrew's grave and talking about our buddy.

Miss You

I have so many pictures on my hard drive that it is full.  I have been taking some time this week cleaning up some of the pictures and getting stuff moved to my external hard drive.  Anyways, as I was looking through pictures I found some one's I had forgotten and made me smile and miss Andrew all over again. He is so so perfect!  I love his face so much in the picture above.  He would always make this face cause he knew it would crack us up.  It was so cute and he could do it on cue.

I never realized how many pictures I have of Andrew with graham cracker on his face.  His mouth is so perfect.

I love Andrew's eyes.  I always felt like he saw so much more in me that I ever saw in myself.

Oh, I love Andrew's smile.  

How cute is that profile?! Andrew had the floppiest ears.  I loved rubbing them and playing with them.  Look at those chubby cheeks!  I miss kissing those!

Andrew had the best worried look.  In almost all of our family pictures we have with him in them, he doesn't know the photographer, so he looks just plain worried.

I feel like I have been going getting so busy with life, the kids, being tired and not feeling too well that I'm so glad I have so many pictures of Andrew that I can go back and look at and realized how blessed I am.  We were so blessed with this perfect boy in our family.  I thank Heavenly Father everyday for our sweet Andrew.  

Jared is 1!

Jared turned 1 on Wednesday (the day we got home from our vacation) and we made him a quick cake to celebrate his birthday.

Jared actually blew out his candle.  

Jared has been such a special blessing to our family.  He is our best snuggler, by far.  He loves laying on our shoulder and when he wakes up in the morning he will even snuggle in our bed for a while.  We have never had any of our kids do that.  

This perfect little boy has met the needs of each one of us so well.  He does the cutest "cheese" grin.

When I hold Jared and pat him on the back or scratch his back, he does the same thing back.  It is so cute to feel his little hand pat my back.  He is really good at waving and clapping.

Jared has 6 teeth and he's working on two more on the bottom. He is crawling all over the place, will walk along stuff, and will stand on his own for small periods of time.  He weighs almost 24lbs (I haven't taken him to his well-child appt yet).

Jared says Mama, Dada, Baba, Aira (Sara), and is good at communicating his needs to us.  He is becoming more and more of a Mommy's boy.  He has the cutest personality.  When people Jared doesn't know come near him, he smiles but buries his head shyly.  It is so cute.

Jared loves his food.  He is getting really good at eating with utensils.  We are slowing weaning him off the bottle and he is doing good with a sippy.

Jared enjoyed opening his presents.

We are so grateful for our little Jared.  He has made the last 9 months bearable for me.  We love you Jare!

Great Wolf Lodge

After Andrew passed away, a few of Eric's teammates from the WSU track team (the same one's who sold bracelets to help pay Eric's medical bills) gave us a gift certificate to the Great Wolf Lodge.  With Eric finishing the boards last Friday, we scheduled it for the Monday after.  We spent three days and two nights and the kids have been asking daily to go back.  

Trav rocking out in the arcade.

Inside the lodge they had a huge water park with an awesome wave pool, toddler pools, five water slides and another pool to swim and play basketball in.  

Tanner and Aubs could've lived at the pool.

In the hotel part they had a magic quest thing where you followed clues and used a wand to go on different adventures.  It kept us busy when we weren't swimming.

Aubree was excited to get a picture with Violet the wolf.  When she saw this picture, she said we needed to frame it.

Jared didn't spend as much time at the pool, but when he was there he had fun crawling around and splashing.  It was awesome to have Eric all to ourselves for a few days. 

We had someone take a picture of us as we left.  We are very grateful for the kindness we have been shown.  Thank you to our friends who made this possible for us.  This was a perfect family vacation that we want to make a tradition of.  We thought and talked about Andrew a lot while we were there.  He would of had so much fun!

The kids were so tired.  Travis hasn't taken his hat off very much since we've been home.